An Unforgiving Season
by quietbang
Summary: It is an unforgiving season for men such as them.


Notes: This takes place in an amorphous time in continuity, with some movie verse thrown in for good measure. Although it was inspired by a combination of XMFC, Generation Hope, and Magneto: Not a Hero, it does not actually take place in any of those timelines. All you really need to know is this: Erik is tentatively working for the X-Men. Charles no longer heads the X-Men, nor is he running the school. In a very real way, neither of them truly has a team anymore. It's very sad. ;(

Work Text:

It is neither the time nor the place for old men.

The winter blows cold, and dark; the damp echoes of long-forgotten wounds whisper regret at every turn.

He pauses, and for a moment he wishes that he had Charles' power; to be able to stop time, even for an instant, would be a boon.

(Of course, he knows that this is not how it really works; that it is an illusion, nothing more, and one that he would of necessity be outside of in order to create it. And it wouldn't help, anyway. What he truly needs is the ability to turn back time, to erase the mistakes and bloodstains writ large upon his soul.)

Perhaps this is the part he was meant to play.

Perhaps it had only begun.

These and more questions keep him awake at night, here in this place amongst those he both taught and attempted to destroy.

(He tells himself he had not intended too; that he would never have deliberately hurt his- _Charles'_ children, but he knows that is a lie. Is this, perhaps, the price of survival? He had made it to old age, neither kith nor kin remaining, outlived even many of his contemporaries, those whom he had met with Charles.

Moira, Gabrielle, Sean, Alex- all, in time, turned to dust beneath the heal of an unforgiving universe.)

And yet he remains. Alive, yet stripped of his pretences, neither the villain nor the hero of the peace.

Then again, he has long since ceased to believe in heroes and in villains.

It is strange, in the end, that for all those years he and Charles had believed the same of the other- that his main fault was believing only in black and white. Neither willing to quite cede the moral highground- Erik, with his acts of what the press likes to call 'domestic terrorism', Charles, with his school that sometimes amounted to little more than a training ground for child soldiers.

The difference, he supposes, is that Charles had always regretted his actions, even as he justified them with the most dangerous words in the world -_for the greater good._

The wind blows, and his joints ache.

He continues.

He has an appointment to keep.

The park is nearly empty, which is not surprising. It is a Tuesday morning in late December, after all, and many of the small children and retirees that would normally frequent the park are either inside for fear of cold or with their families.  
>'tis the season, and all that.<p>

(It occurs to him, vaguely, that it is the first night of Hannukah. He shrugs it off. It is a children's holiday, really, scarcely significant, and he hasn't even celebrated Passover for years. In the decades following the war, the very notion had seemed absurd. He was alone, fit for neither celebration nor mourning.)

It is the season for family. Yet he is alone.

He knows that he was not a good father. That his children- Pietro especially- loathe the very ground he walks on. He knows that he was cruel, and unfair, and unforgivably absent.

He believes that, if he could have just _explained_- they would have understood.  
>But he could not. And so fell another facet of his existence sacrificed for <em>the Cause<em>.

Perhaps it is fitting that, in this time of family, he finds himself in a park, with the only person he could still count as a friend, let alone family.

( Perhaps, once, it could have been more than that. But not now. Charles had been clear about that.  
>"Did you know," he had said, watching Charles out of the corner of his eye, "That my grandson has a- a- is-"<br>He stopped, trying to find the right phrase.

"A boyfriend?" Charles had said mildly. "Yes, I was aware. You know how children gossip."

He had smiled, and met Erik's eyes firmly, who had never been so grateful that he had long ago outgrown the need for that childish helmet to keep Charles out of his head.

"It doesn't bother you, then?"

Charles had sighed, and reached across the chess board to grasp Erik's gloved hand. "Erik, my old friend. Sometimes I look in the mirror, and I scarcely recognize myself. Who am I? A leader without a team? A headmaster without a school?A revolutionary without a cause? All I have fought for, and wished for, made obsolete." He smiled. "I fear time has quite passed me by, Erik. How could I begrudge the young their chance at a life I could never have dreamed of?"

Erik had felt the stirrings of some old, not quite dormant emotion. "Charles-"

"Erik." Charles' smile had turned wistful. "Perhaps, in another life. Were we ordinary men."

"You did not even listen to what I had to say."

"I am hardly in need of telepathy to know what you are thinking, my friend. Those times have long since passed."

His grip had tightened, and Erik had felt the inexplicable urge to cling to it.

He had let go anyway, and moved his rook. )

He smiles softly as he approaches the man in the wheelchair, already parked by a stone chess table.

It is an unforgiving season for men such as them.

Yet this solace is enough- the laughter and the rage of times long gone by sublimated beneath pleasant chatter and a board game. Just two old soldiers, from a long forgotten war.


End file.
